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About this episode
Freddie New has spent years obsessing over one question: how does a superpower destroy itself? The answer, he argues, is always the same - it starts with the money. In this episode we map the fall of Rome directly onto the West today. The Roman denarius lost 97% of its purchasing power over 150 years. The British pound has lost 95% of its in the last century alone.
The parallels don't stop there - military overstretch, a dependent population kept loyal by the state, leaders who can't stop the printing even when they know it's killing them. Rome couldn't stop. We can't either. Freddie has read all 1.5 million words of Edward Gibbon's History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. In this conversation he explains what that teaches us about where we are right now and whether there is a way out.
